Shikakeology: Designing Triggers for Behavior Change: Papers from the 2013 AAAI Spring Symposium
A Journey from Island of Knowledge to
Mutual Understanding in Global Business Meetings
Renate Fruchter and Leonard Medlock
Stanford University, PBL Lab, 473 Via Ortega, Stanford, CA 94305, USA
Abstract
relation to their core business needs and create new ways
of working contexts that foster the development of mutual
understanding, increase engagement and agility in support
of collaborative and creative execution.
What is hard about knowledge work? The knowledge
worker typically needs to collaborate on multiple,
distributed
teams
in
geographically
distributed
organizations. Nevertheless, knowledge workers frequently
feel like an islands of knowledge. They look for purpose
and engagement in a work space that is typically
standardized, gray, and often dull, and a work environment
that is slow, legacy bound, risk averse, flooded with
information so the big picture is hard to see, where
performance assessment is provided once a year on an
individual basis. What are the most important elements to
create mutual understanding and make collaborative
decisions in creative business meetings? More specifically:
• How can new ways of working environments foster the
knowledge worker’s journey from island of knowledge
to mutual understanding in a global team?
• What enables or hinders knowledge workers to build
mutual understanding, engage in collaborative problem
solving and decision making?
• What are key choices and characteristics of knowledge
work environments and ways of working that foster
creative global business meetings?
We address these questions as a transformative journey
from island of knowledge to mutual understanding in the
context of collaborative decision making in creative global
business meetings.
What are the most important elements to create mutual
understanding and make collaborative decisions in creative
business meetings?
We addressed this question as a transformative journey from
island of knowledge to mutual understanding in the context of
collaborative decision making in creative global business
meetings. The paper presents: (1) a mutual understanding
metric (MUM) and method for self assessment and 360 team
assessment that define different MUM stages in the journey
from island of knowledge to mutual understanding; and (2) an
engagement Matrix of Choices (eMOC) prototype to assist
cross-disciplinary, global teams to make explicit choices with
an understanding of the level of collaboration and engagement
they can achieve and the respective enablers and hindrances.
We present “six steps to engagement” framework that offers
three feedback loops as triggers to improve the local and global
collaboration context and behavior, and three choice-decisioncommitment steps towards improving the work environment
and increasing knowledge work productivity. We argue that
iterative and continuous MUM assessment, explicit eMOC
choices, are central to achieve mutual understanding, high
performance teamwork, and eliminate re-work, coordination,
and decision wait time. The rapid prototyping and testing
observations indicate that MUM and eMOC: (1) Allow team
members to build awareness of their local conditions and make
their local conditions transparent and visible to the rest of the
team. (2) Provide a feedback mechanism that indicates the
engagement potential of each team member and the team, as
well as a trigger or nudge towards moving to higher levels of
engagement. (3) Lead to alignment of expectations and
synchronicity of engagement levels.
Global Teamwork Work Environment
Points of Departure
In today’s communication intensive environment the
rapidly changing nature of work is driven by globalization,
collaboration, mobility, digital media, interactive devices,
distributed and multi-location work, and convergence of
physical, virtual, and social spaces and places. One of the
key challenges faced by organizations is to understand and
assess the current knowledge work environments in
We leveraged our ethnographic observations gained over
the past two decades in the PBL Lab focused on crossdisciplinary, globally distributed teams in both learning
and corporate settings. We build on a number of theoretical
points of departure that include:
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• The Bricks-Bits-Interaction (BBI) framework developed
at the PBL Lab (Fruchter, 2001). BBI is at the
intersection of: Bricks, i.e. the design of physical spaces;
Bits, i.e. the design of virtual spaces that focus on ICT
including digital, mobile, and virtual worlds, and
Interaction, i.e. the design of social spaces that focus on
emergent work practices, process, and new ways people
behave during communicative events using the
affordances of their physical, digital, virtual, mobile, and
robotic ICT and workspace. Any change in one of the
three elements of the BBI framework impacts the other
two. Consequently, it is critical to take a bricks-bitsinteraction integrated approach in the choice and
creation of work environments.
• The knowledge work framework we developed based on
five factors: task, team structure, work process,
workplace, ICT, and organization policy (BoschSijtsema et al. 2011). Knowledge work increasingly
takes place from different and changing workplaces due
to mobility, multi-location, and geographical distribution
of participants. Due to the changing contexts knowledge
workers, teams, and organizations need to constantly
have to adapt, readjust, and re-align according to the five
factors. These five key factors pose challenges to the
performance and productivity of knowledge work
performed in distributed teams. The framework extends
and integrates traditional performance models of task,
team structure, and work process, with context factors
like workplace, organization policy and ICT
infrastructure. From a practical point of view the
framework emphasizes the importance of strategic
alignment and integration of the different corporate
business units that currently act as independent business
units.
• The importance of visibility and alignment of local
conditions to achieve high-performance teamwork and
build a sense of team identity and belonging (Fruchter et
al. 2010).
• The relationship between cultural dimensions and
preferences for work location, communication channels,
work and interaction practices need to inform choices
that knowledge workers make in the context of global
teamwork (Hofstede and Minkov, 2010) (Cramton,
2001) (Fruchter and Townsend, 2003).
align their local work environment conditions and build
awareness of each other’s conditions. State-of-practice
observations show that this is difficult to achieve due to the
lack of an engagement metrics and a framework to assist
knowledge workers to make explicit BBI choices.
Knowledge workers seldom are fully aware of other team
members’ local conditions. They typically try to find a
work-around
to
existing
work
environment
communication,
collaboration,
and
coordination
misalignments that act as hindrances. These typically lead
to frustration, re-work, response latency, and coordination
overhead.
The BBI framework guided our effort to define an
engagement matrix of choices (eMoC) to assist global
knowledge workers in achieving mutual understanding of
their local work environment conditions. We envision
teams continuously assess and make explicit choices
related to the BBI available options in their work
environment, i.e., - physical, virtual, and interaction based on an engagement matrix of choices (eMoC). Since
their tasks, activities, and work environment situation
change team members experience a journey of new ways
of working situations towards a gold standard of
engagement as they make better and more informed eMoC
choices.
We defined an engagement gold standard focused on
people, and the content and equipment they create,
manipulate and operate respectively. More specifically, for
a particular collaborative event: (1) All the participants can
hear and see each other, and everyone knows each other’s
local conditions characterized by BBI; (2) everyone can
share, edit, co-create, and interact with the content; and (3)
all participants can hear, see, and control any equipment
that is required during the communicative event.
Based on literature review and PBL Lab team’s two
decades of ethnographic studies of knowledge workers and
global teamwork we consider interactions in four types of
locations / bricks:
1. Collocated: You work physically collocated with other
team member(s) at the corporate headquarter or office.
2. Distributed: You work from a fixed geo-location that is
not headquarters or corporate office.
3. Multi-Location: You work from different known
locations for extended periods of time
4. Mobile: Constantly on the move working from the car,
train, or airport.
The ICT / bits consist of networks, devices, and tools that
knowledge workers use on a regular basis. To assess their
impact on the degree of engagement at any point in time
we use the RAAAS metrics developed at the PBL Lab that
stands for:
• Reliable – indicates how reliable the ICT networks,
devices, and tools are in a specific instance.
eMoC Metrics
Knowing everyone’s local BBI conditions is a key aspect
towards the engagement gold standard. This becomes
critical when knowledge workers are frequently changing
their work environment due to new ways of working
environments that offer diverse work settings as well as
due to mobility and geo distribution of client locations.
Consequently, knowledge workers need to assess and re-
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conditions are that is typically a heterogeneous BBI
situation. This allows the team to calibrate AAPE
assessment to understand the team’s conditions and
identify enablers as a function of RAAAS.
4. We know where We WANT to go – allows the team to
establish a shared goal with respect to the engagement
gold standard and task type, then identify hindrances as
function of RAAAS.
5. We know where We CAN go – allows the team to
identify explicit possible choices with respect to current
enablers and possible hindrances that can be transformed
into enablers as a function of RAAAS.
6. We move – this action step is when the team selects the
next BBI moves for all team members. If a move is
selected to address an existing hindrance, it must be
escalated to next decision level. Everyone commits to
make the chosen moves.
It is important to understand that this is intended to be an
iterative process due to the team members’ frequent change
of work place environment, and a continuous and explicit
effort of the team make BBI choices in order to reach and
maintain the highest possible AAPE degree of engagement.
Note that steps four through six may require some team
members to increase or decrease their AAPE level due to
BBI choices. The following illustrates an example of an
eMoC journey of a team of three. The image shows the
current BBI, RAAAS, AAPE situation – steps 1 through 3,
as well as the engagement goal – step 4. It also illustrates
chutes and ladders, i.e. decreasing or increasing in their
level of engagement through moves and BBI choices –
steps 5 and 6.
We formalized and implemented an eMoC Web-based
prototype consisting of eight tools that address the BBI
choices that knowledge workers make.
Bricks:
• CoFlex tool allows teams to identify the work
environment as a function of location distribution
scenario their team members work in a specific situation
and assess their level of Control-Flexibility. It acts as a
control vs. flexibility potentiometer. We identified
fifteen unique scenarios based on the four location
distributions team members may work, i.e., collocated,
distributed, multi-location, and mobile. The fifteen
scenarios define a spectrum that spans from high control
and minimum flexibility in the case all team members
are collocated in a corporate office space, to minimum
control and maximum flexibility in the case team
members work in multiple locations and are mobile.
• eLoc (engagement Location) tool enables team members
to indicate the type of place they work in, e.g.,
headquarter, corporate office, café, home, train, etc. and
indicate the RAAAS of the specific place.
Bits:
ccKit (communication and collaboration Kit) provides
three tools that allow team members to identify their
communication and collaboration infrastructure and the
• Available – indicates availability of networks, devices,
and tools in a specific instance.
• Accessible - indicates accessibility of networks, devices,
and tools in a specific instance. For instance, the
headquarter office may have a HD video conference
room but the product that is build in the prototyping lab
may be too large to be move to that conference room for
a global meeting to be shown to the remote participants.
• Affordable - indicates affordability of networks, devices,
and tools in a specific instance. For example, not all
remote offices or partner companies may support the
costs of the same ICT.
• Standard – indicates that there are corporate standard
networks, devices, and tools provided and supported in
all geographic locations for all employees.
Based on the engagement gold standard, bricks and bits
we further defined four degrees of engagement/interactions
AAPE:
1. Awareness – all participants can only hear each other.
2. Attention – all participants can only hear and see each
other.
3. Participation – all participants can hear and see each
other, and co-control shared content.
4. Engagement – all participants can co-create the
collaboration space, content, products, in addition to
being able to hear and see each other, and co-control
shared content.
eMoC Metrics Framework: Six Steps to
Engagement
We formalized an eMoC framework. It consists of six steps
towards the highest potential engagement a global team
can achieve in a specific BBI situation. It aims to assist the
knowledge workers to assess, re-assess, and re-align their
local work environment and build awareness of their
current BBI, RAAAS, and AAPE conditions.
The eMoc Six Steps to Engagement framework moves from
the individual level to dyad to team, followed by team
vision, practical choices, commitment of individual to
make a BBI move towards the engagement gold standard.
1. I know where I am – is the first eMoC assessment step
that allows the individual to explicitly understand what
BBI – location, ICT, interaction/work practice choices
he/she made and has available at a specific point in time.
It is a self-reporting BBI, RAAAS and AAPE status
assessment.
2. I know where you are – moves the focus from the
individual to dyads within the project team or group
providing a specific service to a client. It is based on a
bi-directional act in the dyad where each is making
his/her local BBI and RAAAS conditions visible and
gaining an appreciation of the other’s local conditions.
3. We know where we are – leads to an overall
understanding where the team or group members’
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respective RAAAS and AAPE level. ccKit includes three
components:
• ccNetw that indicates available networks.
• ccDev that indicates available devices.
• ccTools that indicates available tools. For ccTools we
identified key functionalities in increasing complexity
and benefits in terms of an AAPE communication and
collaboration – from viewing to sensing (see illustrative
example).
Interaction:
• vSpeed (virtuality Speed) tool accounts for virtuality
impact in project work load. It allows each team member
to assess their work load as a function of number of
projects in which team members are collocated or virtual
and make it visible to all team members. It is known that
all activities taking place in distributed/virtual settings
take longer and are more complex. Consequently, we
implemented vSpeed with a heuristic factor of 1.5 for
virtual project teams, i.e. the work load in a
geographically distributed project team can increase by
50% due to communication and coordination overhead
triggered by discontinuities such as time, space, and
culture. vSpeed acts as a reported vs. actual (adjusted)
feedback indicator of the work load and consequently
real work speed of the team members who are virtual vs.
collocated.
• eSkill (engagement Skill) tool that indicates the selfreported years of experience (or equivalent) each team
member has. It is combined with a 360eSkill tool that
provides feedback from the other team members of the
person’s perceived skill, performance, trustworthiness
with respect to competence, commitment, follow through
and engagement on task. Such feedback allows team
members to recalibrate their skill level and expectations.
The scope is to align expectations and reach
synchronicity, consequently better manage their
recourses and set realistic project schedules.
• enGauge (engagement Gauge)tool is intended to show
the AAPE level as a function of demand vs. supply,
where the demand dimension indicates work load and
availability as a function of number of projects; and
supply is represented by the skill level as a function of
experience.
o “I am very busy, run and run, I now understand. Now I
want to apply this tool to my team.”
o “I was not really aware where “I AM” now I can see
where “I AM” and make it easy to communicate to my
colleagues where “I AM”…” – first step in 6 steps to
engagement.”
o “I've become aware that I have to distinguish my tools in
term of synchronous interactivity. For example, we have
many bulletin boards (just a board!) as one of
communication tools in our office. But I don't think they
work well for communication and collaboration. It might
be a matter of asynchronous interactivity.”
They reported that one of the challenges they typically
faced in distributed teamwork was to make their local
conditions visible, which in turn led to misunderstandings
and mis-alignments in objectives and activities. They
indicated that eMoC and MUM tools can be very helpful
and are intuitive to make local conditions visible to remote
team members and improve teamwork.
Participants commented that through this eMoC and
MUM pilot experiments they became aware how little they
knew about their team mates’ work load and conditions, as
well as how important it is to know this information in
order to have more realistic dead lines and work plans.
They realized that they do not know exactly how many
projects their team mates work on and how many of them
are distributed..
We plan to continue the rapid prototyping cycles and
further test the next eMoC prototypes in cross-disciplinary
globally distributed teams.
Aknowledgements: The research team would like to thank
MediaX and Konika Minolta for their seed funding.
References
Bosch-Sijtsema, P. M., Fruchter, R., Vartiainen, M., and
Ruohomaki, V. (2011) A Framework to Analyze Knowledge
Work in Distributed Teams, Group & Organization Management
(GOM), gom.sagepub.com, April 2011, 1-33.
Cramton, D. C. (2001). The mutual knowledge problem and its
consequences for dispersed collaboration. Organization Science,
12, 346-371.
Fruchter, R., Bosch- Sijtsema, P. and Ruohomaki, V., (2010)
Tension between perceived collocation and actual geographical
distribution in project teams, International Journal of AI &
Society. Vol 25, 183-192
Fruchter, R. and Townsend, A. (2003) Multi-cultural Dimensions
and Multi-Modal Communication in Distributed CrossDisciplinary Teamwork, International Journal of Engineering
Education, Vol. 19, Nr. 1, 53-61.
Fruchter, R. (2001) Bricks & Bits & Interaction, in Exploring
New Frontiers on Artificial Intelligence, Eds. T. Terano, T.
Nishida, A. Namatame, Y. Ohsawa, S. Tsumoto, and T. Washio,
in LNAI 2253, Springer Verlag, Dec. 2001, 35-42.
Hofstede, G. and Minkov, M., (2010) Cultures and
Organizations: Software for the Mind, 3rd edition, McGraw Hill.
Preliminary Observations and Findings
We tested the eMoC framework and the mutual
understanding metric (MUM) in two experimental pilots –
an education testbed and a corporate testbed. Due to the
rapid prototyping approach we gained valuable insights,
and collected a number of preliminary observations and
findings presented in the following. Participants noted
during their iterative experience with the MUM and eMoC
prototype tool that it allowed them to build an awareness of
their and their team members’ local conditions.
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